Faculty at Cal State University say administration pay raises over the last decade, amid what they claim are stagnating salaries for professors, prove executives in the 23-campus system value lining their pockets over educating students.

Lillian Taiz, president of the CFA and a history professor at Cal State Los Angeles, told reporters during a conference call that “it’s time really at long last to fix the problems” created over the last 10 years, which illustrate CSU’s “misplaced priorities and problematic choices.”

Comparing CSU administrators to corporate tycoons, the faculty union says top executives look out first for those highest on the organizational ladder, even as students endure higher fees and state budget cuts.

According to the report, while management positions ballooned from 2004 to 2014, accompanying salaries rose by 24 percent. Last year, the average full-time salary for a CSU manager was $106,149, according to the report, while the average full-time salary for a CSU faculty member was $64,479.

CFA is issuing the reports as it heads into salary talks with university administrators later this spring. Akin to a boxing match, with the combatants throwing numbers at each other instead of fists, the Long Beach-based Chancellor’s Office responded, as it did earlier this month, with its own set of figures.

The Chancellor’s Office said Tuesday as soon as the state emerged from the Great Recession and began to reinvest in the CSU, the university prioritized boosting employee pay, including over the last two years, when the system invested more than $129.6 million in pay increases, with more than half going to faculty. Another $65.5 million is slated for 2015-16 for all employees, officials said.

CSU also released a fact sheet on faculty pay. According to CSU, employee salaries remained flat from 2007 and 2012 because of state budget constraints, but faculty still received a general salary increase of 2 percent in 2008, the only employee group to get a raise during the period.

At the same time, CSU paid for increases in health and welfare benefits, as well as retirement contributions, officials said. The Chancellor’s Office in 2015-16 expects the costs of healthcare premiums and retirement contributions to spike $77.3 million.

Laurie Weidner, vice chancellor of public affairs, said employee salaries make up 84 percent of CSU’s operating budget, with 50 percent of that going to faculty pay. The system invests $108,000 in salary and benefits for each new faculty hire.

The Chancellor’s Office is looking into the faculty-provided numbers, but at first glance, they don’t take into account promotion programs and pay raises for faculty, Weidner said. CSU says in 2013-14, 45 percent of promoted faculty received more than a 7.5 percent bump and in 2014-15, about 75 percent of faculty received more than a 7.5 percent increase.

“We continue to invest in faculty,” Weidner said. “They are a priority at the CSU, as are all our employee groups. We have every intention to continue to invest in faculty compensation in the years ahead, and we have made that a priority in our support budget request.”

CSU says in 2014-15, the system hired 740 new tenure-track faculty, the most since 2007.

Bill Tierney, professor of higher education and co-director of the Pullias Center for Higher Education at USC, said across the country, the fastest growing sector in higher education is middle management.

“There can be reasons for that, but I think for faculty, they’ll look askance and wonder why are personnel increasing in one area and decreasing in another, especially faculty,” he said.

While the CSU has argued that increased management is needed because services to students have increased, Tierney said such reasoning is typical of bureaucratic systems where management says the workload requires more employees.

Combined with increased pay for presidents and executives, Tierney said, “The scenery on this horrible.”

Indeed, CFA also blasted president salaries in its report, saying the campus leaders have soaked up hefty raises while raking in relocation expenses, housing allowances, home remodeling funds, car allowances, entertainment expenses and travel expenses.

Adding fuel to the controversy, six campus presidents, including those at Northridge and San Bernardino, had pay increases based on salaries that include supplemental pay from private campus foundations, which typically help fund student scholarships.

The CFA report criticizes the hiring of temporary adjunct professors versus tenure-track faculty. The number of tenured and tenure-track faculty fell 3 percent from 10,399 to 10,099 between fall 2004 and fall 2014.

CSU has used a “fast-food franchise model of faculty staffing” where the number of temporary faculty over the last decade grew by 46.4 percent, according to the faculty union.

What’s at stake is program development on campuses as tenured professors are those who lead cutting-edge instruction and course design, Tierney said.

“It’s true adjunct faculty are cheaper than tenure-track, but most of us would argue tenure-track faculty are vital for a first-rate institutional system,” Tierney said.